


and you the same (and your parents the same)

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [19]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Earth-3, Friendship, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Healthy Boundaries, Loss, Mexican-American character, Mirror Universe, Nobody Dies, POV Outsider, Police Brutality, Sort Of, Trauma, alternate universe good joker and his OC civilian friend, but Alonzo isn't chill about it so it's a bigger deal, literally an entire fic about relationship issues between, the risks of being a deranged vigilante, the violence isn't even much by this series' standards, youth gangs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27139588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Alonzo is an upstanding Gotham citizen, secretary of International Longshoreman's Association local chapter and father of two.His best friend thinks nothing of picking a fight with a cop.It's starting to be a problem.
Relationships: Jokester & Alonzo Serrano (OC)
Series: Cirque de Triomphe [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/201293
Comments: 29
Kudos: 58





	and you the same (and your parents the same)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay _seriously_ trying to get out of the hiatus on this series, I'm going to start posting things even if I have Doubts about them. (Such as: wtf this is so niche no one likes OCs.) I've been wanting everyone to meet Alonzo properly forever. 
> 
> Alonzo is the Gotham-born son of Mexican parents so his primary language is English but he’s bilingual; he uses Spanish in this fic at a few different points for the sake of emphasis (and poetry). The type of hybrid sentence this produces is different from what you tend to get when someone falls back into their primary language while speaking, but if anyone with more personal insight feels I got it wrong, please do feel free to correct.
> 
> I originally wrote this in 2014 and then police shootings rocketed up in the national consciousness and I was no longer satisfied with it, but at this point it’s pretty clear I’m not going to write a whole new version based around different assumptions about the audience's perspective. So here we go.
> 
> This is set in 1998 so no one has a cell phone lmao.

Alonzo’s teeth grated loud as another gunshot in his own ears as he wished he’d gone and taken that EMT course like his mother had wanted.

There were two holes, which meant the bullet was out, which meant the important thing was keeping up pressure to slow the bleeding, but since he knew that from _TV_ he wasn’t too reassured.

It had been a normal day. A _good_ day. His Thursday off work; he’d spent the morning at home with the kids, since it was summer break and that meant he could take some time to be Papa and Tío without distractions. But they were all growing up, and by afternoon had been ready to split off and do their own things—Luz was seeing a boy, and if they got any more serious she _was_ bringing him home for dinner, no arguments—so he’d met up with Jokester for a late lunch, like the old days.

He’d noticed J ordering the cheapest things on the menu and frowned, because he remembered the reflex from when it was his, too, but it wasn’t good; his old friend who had a kid at home, who worked so hard and always had, having trouble making ends meet. A voice in his head that sounded like his late mother saying _he’s always too thin_ , and Alonzo had picked up the whole check. Grilled cheese sandwich, a buck fifty, who cared. “No arguments,” he said sternly, and J laughed and laughed and said, _thanks, ‘lonzo, you’re a pal._

“And you’re a doofus,” Alonzo had retorted easily as he pushed open the front door to Louise’s.

“Hahah! And you’re a _dad_.”

“So are you.”

“Shhh.” J’s lazy grin didn’t flicker, but the note of warning came through anyway. Alonzo winced, and then hoped nobody had noticed. Right. Nobody knew the Jokester was a father, and for little Ella’s sake, better keep it that way.

Something ridiculous in J, with his loud and outrageous open personality, having a better knack for not letting secret topics slip in public than Alonzo, who’d always been the private type. All about practice, he guessed.

“You’ve practically adopted half the homeless kids in Gotham,” he said, “don’t start.” This had the benefit of being true. He tried not to sound like he was covering anything up. He probably failed. Nobody looked like they were listening. Some people in the diner had been staring, not-so-sneakily, because Jokester was the most instantly recognizable vigilante in America even out of his eye-catching green and gold work outfit, but they were outside now and the sidewalk wasn’t crowded.

“Just because I’m friends with them doesn’t mean I’m their _dad,_ ” J groaned, the long corners of his mouth still curling up. “I don’t even actually _know_ half of them, ‘lonzo, that is like six thousand people even not counting the homeless kids of homeless parents; when would I sleep.”

“I wonder that a lot,” Alonzo retorted, and then realized that his friend had stopped paying attention to him and was staring at something across the street and a little way down.

It was a standoff. Grouped on the sidewalk, half a dozen teenagers; one of them white, with his hair in terrible, tufty mud-colored dreads, a couple Alonzo thought maybe Colombianos, and three black kids.

One of those was front and center at the edge of the curb, tall for his age but skinny, and with his shoulders bulked back defensively as he looked a few inches down at a uniformed cop, who was standing on the street where it joined the sidewalk, jaw thrust out, hand near his weapon, and eyes all squinty-angry.

He was a very typical angry policeman, heavyset white man of maybe forty, with small eyes, a wide round jaw, and a shaved head. Alonzo always wondered why so many cops shaved their heads; it was basically never flattering on a white guy, especially if he was overweight. It was like they were asking for the pig thing.

“Well blow me down,” Jokester muttered, which was one of those stupid things he managed to make sound less stupid by saying them with such conviction. The kids were all wearing the same blue-and-white patch on their right shoulders, which Alonzo knew (courtesy of this one loudmouth friend of his with the purple hair), meant they were some of the Jay Street Jackals, an up-and-coming youth gang currently just small enough to fall beneath Owlman’s radar.

A lot of their recruitment came from neighborhoods where J had a major presence, so he’d known a lot of the boys as kids, and he’d confided he was worried sick about them.

Not _just_ because they were likely to fall under the Owl’s shoot-it-or-recruit-it meatgrinder if they drew much more attention to themselves, but also for all the normal reasons a family friend had to worry about kids who’d gotten sucked into gang life. Violence. Drugs. A rap sheet. Your sweet baby getting influenced into doing something awful that would never, ever wash off for as long as he lived.

 _Alonzo_ had gotten his family out of the East End as soon as he could. He was up north of the Westward Bridge for years now, him and his widowed sister and their cumulative five kids, and he didn’t miss the old neighborhood one bit. Well, almost not one bit. It was definitely worth it. But he didn’t think J had any intention of changing anything about his own crazy suicidal lifestyle, baby girl of his own or not. And here the shithead was, proving him right.

Because he was walking _toward_ the problem.

“ _J,_ ” Alonzo hissed at his back, but it was too late—not that speaking earlier would have helped much—because the cop had noticed him already, and all Alonzo could do was stay put and try to look uninvolved. Mother of _God_.

“Hey,” Jokester called out as he crossed the street, all bright and liquid and easy, like the cop and the Jackals were all his friends. Alonzo’s stomach clenched as they all looked toward him, but J seemed unconcerned.

He wasn’t in what he called his ‘costume,’ all carefully sewn seams and hidden pockets and thin panels of Kevlar under bright green cloth. He was wearing a _windbreaker._ And jeans. If there were any tricks at all up his sleeves, it wasn’t much. But J could never _stop_ being the Jokester, not really. Not without several hours of makeup or one of those holograph projector things to hide behind.

(And Alonzo resented that fact, fiercely. The friend he’d had all those years ago, before Owlman, before the acid, Jamie (Jack-John-Josiah) the amnesiac, might have been reckless and incredibly ignorant and uncertain of his own identity on way too many levels, but Red Hood had been something the guy could take off and put on again, when he needed it, when he was _ready_ for it.

J was a public sort of person, but that was exactly why he deserved the option of anonymity. Because even if he didn’t get worn down by fear like most people would, he still wasn’t someone that could thrive on having to keep his guard up every time he set foot outside his home, and it wasn’t _fair._ )

“What seems to be the problem, Officer?” J asked, mild as milk and twice as cheerful, strolling up to the scene with his hands carefully, casually in view. He’d approached from the middle of the street, so he was standing at the cop’s level instead of above, and the man had to turn over ninety degrees away from the kids to look at him, which he had done. Distraction successful. Damn the man.

There were enough outstanding warrants on J’s head that there was a pretty good chance he could wind up ‘defusing’ the current situation by making himself the focus of all the cop’s hostility, while the Jackals peeled off. Assuming they were actually willing to.

J was enough of a lunatic to be _counting on that_.

“Jokester,” the cop said, sharply, drawing back a little, his hand near his waist sliding back inches closer to his gun, until the butt of it knocked against his palm.

J raised both hands a little higher; open and empty. Not that that meant much, with him. “Hey, now,” he smiled. Disarming. “I come in peace. No need to get all heated up, Officer Aulden.”

And oh, shit. Alonzo wasn’t in the habit of interacting with the police if he could help it, or gossiping about them, either, and he certainly hadn’t recognized the face, but he knew the name. There’d been a scandal a few years ago, petitions circulated to get the man indicted on what was apparently a long way from his first time abusing his position to get away with violence, and while he’d escaped both charges and firing, he now had a _reputation_. He wasn’t the worst of the lot, not by a long way. He wasn’t a mastermind, and he wasn’t a cold-blooded sadist. But he had a hair trigger, and an overblown sense of his own importance even for a cop, and he was completely paranoid.

This was not a man you wanted to see with his thumb hooked over his belt, right next to his holster. This was not really a man you wanted having a gun at all.

“Department regs say not to even bother trying to take you in with less than five men,” Aulden stated, narrow-eyed. “Waste of police time. You giving yourself up?”

J’s grin widened, and Alonzo realized he had _known that._ Counted on it. (Was probably going to crow about it later. Jerk. Really? Minimum of five?) “Heavens, no. Trusting myself to the tender mercies of the GCPD has not served me well in the past.”

He gave a discreet wiggle of his fingers toward the kids, trying to get them to leave. He couldn’t be too obvious about it or he’d direct Aulden’s attention back to them, and then no more distraction. Alonzo tried to help by making meaningful faces at them from across the street, without doing anything dramatic enough to draw the cop’s attention away from J. It wasn’t very effective.

“I mean, your precinct captain broke my ribs last time we met, ya know?”

The finger wiggling and significant eyebrow messages _might_ have gotten through. It was hard to tell. Thing was, the kids were too young and too pissed off right now to _want_ to escape the confrontation, even though there was no way for them to come through it without losing.

“He’s out to get us,” spoke up the tufty-headed white kid, all grievance like J was a teacher come to mediate an argument between students. Were these kids still in school? They were the right age, but there were a lot of drop-outs in Gotham and gang kids especially. “We were just _walking._ ”

“Blocking the sidewalk,” Aulden corrected, swinging around to glare at them some more.

“We didn’t _do_ anything,” said another kid; he didn’t have enough accent for Alonzo to be sure he was Colombian, and that teenaged glower was universal.

“We _tried_ to leave,” said the tall kid who’d been staring the cop down, making the same face.

“Good idea,” J said brightly. “Let’s all do that.”

“Nobody goes anywhere until I say.”

“Look, officer,” Jokester chided, his hands still spread apart and visible, but lower now, “have you got any grounds for detaining these boys?”

“You don’t scare me,” Aulden fired back.

“That’s neat, but without some kind of charge you actually can’t legally detain anybody.”

“Don’t tell me about the law, scumbag,” the officer snapped. “They’re under suspicion of having contraband.”

“Okay, and? They haven’t _done_ anything. You can’t just search them because you feel like it. That’s unconstitutional.” J knew that never stopped anyone. What was he _doing?_

“They’re wearing gang signs, I can do whatever I want.”

“Look, I _volunteer_ to be searched, okay? Go for it. You kids head home, huh?”

“We can’t just—” began the tall black kid.

“ _Nicky,_ ” hissed the heavyset one.

Nicky let his sentence end in a hiss. “Fine.”

Aulden raked a glare over the group. “Don’t you move.”

The kids exchanged looks. As one, they started to back away from the curb. Nicky had his long arms held out at his sides, but unlike J his palms were turned back, like he was shepherding his friends rather than signaling submission. But his arms weren’t long enough to warp around them all.

Aulden stepped sharply up onto the curb and grabbed the shortest black kid by the wrist before he could get out of reach. The kid gave a shout, shook him off. Angrily, Aulden went for his gun, snapping an order Alonzo couldn’t make out. The short kid, who was probably about fourteen, took another step back. He looked terrified.

Fury flashed across his tallest friend’s face.

Alonzo saw the kid’s hand move, diving into his coat, and the bottom fell out of his gut, as at the same time he wished both that he hadn’t stood so far back, so he could _do_ something, and felt unspeakably _relieved_ that he was back here, off to the side, not in the way, not in much danger. (This was why he would never, ever be a superhero.)

And while he was stumbling forward off the curb, not sure what to do, not even sure whether shouting would just make everything worse especially if the kid was somehow doing something _other_ than pulling a piece—

Aulden had his weapon out. The Jay Street kid finished drawing out his, which was indeed a gun, something small and blunt and nasty-looking. They both brought the muzzles up, around. Alonzo had time to see the cop’s teeth showing, sweat standing out on his jowls. The white showing all around the kids’ eyes.

Jokester, stepping smoothly in between them with no hesitation, with that smile of _I know exactly what I’m doing._

And then _ba-bang!_ Two shots, one on top of the other. No way to be sure which had come first.

Nicky the Jay Street Jackal holding his snub-nosed little thing in both hands, eyes even wider than they’d been a second before. Staring at Jokester’s back.

J stood there, hunched forward slightly, the barrel of Aulden’s gun still wrapped tight in his fingers, pointing down toward a new hole in the pavement where he’d deflected the shot that would have gone through his face. Ignoring the entry wound in his back, the exit wound in his gut, even as blood began to drip, the Jokester tilted his head a little, sought out the policeman’s eyes. Smiling.

“ _Run,_ ” he advised.

It was madness. Jokester had hold of Aulden’s pistol, sure, but he’d just been _shot_ ; he wasn’t going to be winning a grappling match. Aulden was surrounded by disapproving strangers, but most of them were completely uninvolved except for watching, and none of them except the kid who’d just shot the Jokester really had anything to gain from attacking a cop who hadn’t even successfully hurt anyone, and they all had _everything_ to lose.

But Aulden quailed, all the same, his face like sweaty cheese, and darted a look around the street, seeming to see nothing but the dislike, to feel nothing but the way someone else had control of his weapon. Alonzo seemed to be seeing from a million miles away as the cop’s nerve broke.

J let go, as Aulden pulled back. Let the man take his weapon with him as he fled, but unlatched the magazine with a little twist as it drew away, so that the clip slid out the bottom of the grip and onto the pavement. Aulden didn’t stop to retrieve it. He just ran.

(There would be one bullet in the chamber again already, because that was how semiautomatics worked; fire one and there would already be another in place, until they all ran out. If someone tried to hurt him, he’d be able to shoot them exactly once. That seemed _more_ than fair.)

Aulden’s flight seemed to be a signal, and everybody else began moving, too. The passers-by went back to passing, rather hurriedly; the kids melted away like water now that it was too late, and Alonzo broke his paralysis to scramble forward, not even worrying anymore that Aulden might be looking behind him as he fled and noticing him. Nobody _ever_ said running to help a bleeding man was a felony, no matter how Wanted the man was.

And that was how he had ended up here, kneeling in the street, trying to keep J’s blood inside him where it belonged.

“Hey,” said a high, slightly nervous voice. Alonzo looked up—it was a young white girl, bird-boned with mousy brown hair up in a bun. Her hand fidgeted on her purse strap. “Can I help?”

Alonzo’s first impulse was to say _no_ , except he did need help. J needed it. The fact that he personally didn’t like strangers pushing their way into his business didn’t mean he should be rude to Good Samaritans just because he was stressed, his mother would have scolded him with a wooden spoon.

“Thanks,” he said. “Get his feet.”

She looked a little overwhelmed, and moving somebody who’d been shot was a really bad idea but leaving him in the street had to be worse, when he was in no condition to escape if Aulden came back with reinforcements. Or a truck in a hurry came rolling along, and didn’t swerve. The volunteer bent down to aim a look of concentration at J’s bony ankles.

In the next second they were joined by a big black guy with no hair and three gold chain necklaces, which Alonzo saw as an asshole fashion choice, but he couldn’t be too much of an asshole because here he was helping drag Alonzo’s stupid, _shot_ vigilante friend carefully out of sight into the mouth of a not-totally-disgusting nearby alley. Alonzo propped J up half-sitting against him, rather than let either of his wounds get too close to the ground or the brick walls, and reached awkwardly around to keep pressing on the injury from both the front and back of J’s right side.

“Now what do we do,” the girl asked, in a stage whisper.

“I know CPR!” the big guy volunteered.

“He doesn’t _need_ CPR,” Alonzo snapped, mostly because he really hoped it wasn’t going to come to that, but the Good Samaritan drew back, affronted. The girl chewed her lip.

“Well, what _can_ we do?” she asked, again, a little louder than the first time. She had blood on her nice pumps.

“Help with,” Alonzo began.

“Aulden’s gonna be back soon with more guys,” Jokester broke in, which was the first sign he’d given of consciousness since he’d collapsed. His voice sounded weak but alert, and like he was spending energy he didn’t have. “You guys should get somewhere safe.”

“You total jackass,” Alonzo hissed at him, “ _callate,”_ and told the other two, “Help me figure out how to slow down the bleeding first. _Please._ ”

“We’ve got to apply pressure,” said Necklace Guy, which, _obviously_ , Alonzo was _doing_ that.

J wound up talking them through the process of bandaging him, mostly with strips of his own neon windbreaker, which Alonzo didn’t like because J needed to keep his body temperature up. Necklace Guy sacrificed his undershirt and the girl produced two emergency _sanitary napkins_ from her purse, which gave Alonzo and Necklace Guy a brief bonding moment of excruciating embarrassment, though J of course seemed totally unaffected. But they _were_ the most sterile absorbent thing they had, so. On they went, directly against the wound.

The whole assemblage was strapped on tight with Alonzo and J’s belts, though not tight enough to stop the bleeding entirely because he needed to breathe, and the idiot grinned up at them all when it was done. “Thanks guys.” The smile widened. His lips were looking less red than usual, though of course his face couldn’t get any paler. “Ain’t I always tellin’ you, ‘lonzo, strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.”

“Ha, yeah,” said the young woman, a little conviction leaking into her shocky smile.

“But I bet you’ve both got…places to be.” The way J said it, it meant something like _you need to not get caught in the middle of this._ Alonzo guessed it was a kind of compliment that J hadn’t even tried to pull the same thing with him.

“Yeah,” Necklace Guy allowed. “I’m late for work.”

The girl nodded, presumably meaning she was too. She stood up, readjusting her purse strap on her shoulder. “We have street medic classes,” J volunteered at a wheeze. “If you guys want to come sign up sometime.”

“Maybe I will,” said the girl, and the guy looked thoughtful. Both of them started to leave, looking back over their shoulders occasionally but still definitely leaving, and frustration swelled in Alonzo’s throat that he was being left alone with this. “You could call an ambulance!” he said. “J, you want an ambulance, right?”

“Nah. No. M’good.”

“You were _shot in the back._ Your intestines could be leaking into your liver right now.”

“M _’fine. Can’t_ go to th’hospital. They’ll get me. No ambulance, thanks!” he called after the girl, who’d paused in the alley mouth to watch them argue. Uncomfortably, she nodded. Took another step sideways, out onto the sidewalk.

“I’ll be okay,” J promised her, turning on all the charm he shouldn’t be able to use with a face like his, but could anyway. “My wife’s a doctor.” Something eased in her face, which was ridiculous because ‘has free access to a doctor’ did not actually guarantee access to all the fancy modern medical stuff that would make a bullet wound through the torso less of a death sentence. Especially since Harley was a _goddamn psychiatrist._ The girl didn’t know that. She left.

Necklace Guy lingered a little longer; looked a question at Alonzo. He wasn’t sure what the question was. “Call this number,” Alonzo said, deciding to assume it was ‘is there anything else I can do,’ and gave the one for Quinzel’s clinic. Necklace Guy repeated it back. Alonzo nodded. “Tell them what happened.”

“Thanks,” he and J said in the same moment. Necklace Guy gave one of those funny, abrupt little smiles that usually meant you felt like laughing but not enough to actually laugh, and flashed a peace sign, and turned left into the street.

Alonzo found he relaxed just a little once he was gone. Now all he had to do was sit and wait for help to come, and try not to let J die in the meantime. Which was awful and hard, but at least it was _straightforward_. He was a strong man and he knew it, but his hands were getting tired trying to apply continuous pressure like this, around the belts. He tightened his wrists, trying not to jostle his friend more than he had to.

“Thanks,” J repeated, a little breathless, and Alonzo sighed.

“What just happened, Jamie? Did you…you took that bullet on purpose? For _Aulden?_ That corrupt hijo de puta with a brutality record like un highway federal?”

Jokester let out a laugh that turned into a rattle. “He’s…got a family.”

“ _Y tú tambi_ _én,_ ” Alonzo growled. And he could not. Holy Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, how was he friends with this jackass.

The stupid clown smiled like he wasn’t bleeding to death. “M’good at surviving.”

What he _meant_ was, he knew his family could take care of each other just fine without him. He was, of course, wrong.

Alonzo wanted to shake him, but until they knew which of his organs had holes in them that was an awful idea. “You empty-headed _lunatic_.”

“Certified,” J said happily.

“Don’t _smile_. La policía kill somebody every _day_ in this town. Aulden es un _fucking serial killer_ hiding behind a badge, y pienses que his life is worth yours?”

“Well,” Jokester allowed, “I wouldn’t cry if I heard he’d died, or anything. But I couldn’t jus’ _let it happen._ I mean. He was scared. You saw that, right? I bet…he’s one a those guys…scared alla time, an’ it makes him mean, so everybody hates him, so he gets more scared.”

“ _Good,_ ” Alonzo snapped, still pressing at the wound. Wound for which he was fully prepared to blame _both_ idiots with guns, _especially_ Aulden even though his bullet had drawn no blood, because _he_ was supposed to be a grownup and an authority figure and an _example._ Also he had consistently escalated the encounter.

J sniggered weakly. “Yeah, but…” One of his hands flopped loosely at the end of his wrist, what would be the stupid round floppy gesture he made so often, if he’d had the strength. _Yeah, but it’s why he abuses his authority. Yeah, but it means people get hurt._

Being a coward was a _fucking terrible reason_ for being dangerous.

“S’not that I _planned_ to get shot. Jus’ Nicky was less likely to shoot me in the back, shoot me on purpose, of the two of ‘em, so he was the one I gave a chance to. Thing was, I got in there too fast, they weren’t expectin’ it…usually that’s good, y’know? My bad.”

“ _Yes_ it was your bad. You should’ve stayed out of it.”

“Y’know I couldn’t do that, pal.” J gave a little sigh, and it wasn’t as dramatic as it should have been. “I misread things. Bad timin’. It happens. Kinda embarrassed it had to happen when you were watchin’…”

“ _Callate,_ ” Alonzo snapped again. He should go get help. He couldn’t leave J alone.

Necklace Guy was calling help. Harlequin and the others would figure something out.

“I screwed up,” J insisted. “I shoulda been able to wind that down.”

“It’s not your _job_ to be the one who gets hurt,” Alonzo insisted back. “Let them handle themselves sometimes.”

J shook his head, purple hair with blood soaked into the ends flapping weakly. He was still propped sideways against Alonzo’s chest, and his breathing _couldn’t_ be deep because of the belts but he swore it was getting shallower. “It is my job, though. This is…what I signed up for.”

“No,” said Alonzo, because he knew too many people who acted like the Jokester was something superhuman, like his tricks and wins and narrow escapes were effortless and foreordained. And, no matter how much he knew it was _supposed_ to look like that, it got to him, because it was still just that idiot Jamie really, under all the scars and stories. Sometimes he thought even J forgot that.

J’s weak hand curled around Alonzo’s knee. “I believe in freedom,” he said quietly. “I believe in equality. And once we start saying oh, they don’t have the right to live just because they’re _bad guys_ , just let them die…we’ll start being like them. ‘cause that’s what they say about us, ya know? That we’re scum, so that makes it okay. And you can’t start thinking like that. Disposable people. Once you start throwing people away, the group that’s trash just grows and grows and. Once both sides think like that, it’s a war.”

“Don’t you think,” Alonzo asked, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth, the words that weren’t like him because he hated conflict popping between his teeth because these weren’t normal circumstances, “es possible que tú _ya había entrado_ en guerra, y porque you won’t _treat_ it like one, they’re winning?”

“Nobody ever wins a war.”

Jokester’s smile had gone soft, and vague, and what Alonzo would have called under other circumstances damned condescending, and he patted Alonzo’s hand on his wound as his eyes slid out of focus. “There’s jus’…a thousan’ diff’rent ways t’lose.”

“Fine, okay.”

J kept talking. “B’sides, ‘lonzo. Y’know Nicky hadn’ never killed nobody b’fore.”

He hadn’t known that, although the kid’s face when he realized who he’d hit had been a hint. “And you think he’d rather start with _you?_ J. _Respires_ , cabrón. _Deep_ breaths, come on, conmigo.”

J obediently did his best to mimic Alonzo’s long steady breaths, which was just more proof that this was bad. Broke it up with the occasional chuckle. “M’not totally dumb, y’know,” he claimed, after a little while breathing. “Toldja. Most important was saving the kid, and then I figured if I had to let one of ‘em hit me, he was less likely to go through with it, an’ his shot’d be easier to survive.”

“Pero que you did not _have to_ let yourself get shot. Which is why yes, you are so, _so_ dumb.”

“Aw, c’mon. Y’know Nicky’s life wouldn’ be worth living, he shot a cop down.”

“Tch.”

J’s voice was slurring more and more.

“I jus’…hate t’see people in no-win scenarios, y’know?”

“Kid could’ve backed down. He’s an actual gang member with an _actual_ illegal weapon and he mouthed off to a cop, people die for less all the time.”

“He’s _sixteen._ ” J retorted, and then lapsed into a fit of weak coughing. Alonzo sat there and propped him up and felt like a heel.

How had he wound up in a situation like this?

He had always kept his nose clean, growing up. Worked hard, studied hard, listened to his mother. He’d lost a few friends to crime, but mostly by avoiding them after they got mixed up in bad business, or hearing after the fact that somebody’d been shot, found beaten to death. People he’d known. Nobody he’d been _close_ to, though. And never where he could see. He’d been good, he’d been lucky…and then he’d gone and made friends with the craziest bastard in Gotham.

All he could say in his defense was that it hadn’t been obvious at first. They’d met on the docks, back when the union’s power was at a low ebb and Alonzo had been taking jobs that definitely weren’t up to standard, and hit it off for no real reason other than that Alonzo had been the only one willing to respond to ‘Jamie’s’ bright chatter and keep responding.

He’d been so delighted by the smallest things, back then. Even more than now. By things no one else cared about. The sound of stinking waves lapping against blackened piers. The wheel of seagulls, so thick above the harbor they were like a low bank of cloud. Being offered a piece of somebody’s candy bar.

Alonzo had shared so damn many candy bars.

Twelve years ago, gazing wistfully across the floor of the club at Rosa, whose name he hadn’t known yet. _Go on, talk to her,_ urged his long-nosed friend, who’d been going by John at the time, though Alonzo had mostly stuck to calling him Jamie. Ordinary, goofy white-boy grin.

_I don’t know. You think I should?_

_Absolutely. You have to get a love life already, ‘lonzo, so I can be your wingman._

_Oh, so I’m just a vehicle for your ambitions here?_

_That’s right. Now go say hi. Tell her she has hair like midnight silk._

_I am not saying that. Don’t give advice when you have no experience._

_What, I talk to women all the time. Anyway, even things living under_ rocks _know you can’t get anywhere if you don’t take the first step. G’wan, the worst she can do is laugh at you._

_Thanks for the support._

And okay, things hadn’t worked out with Rosa in the end. But they’d been good while they lasted. And he’d gotten the kids out of it, and he’d never wish them away. And then J, of course, having gotten himself mostly murdered in the meantime, went and found his dream girl _in a lunatic asylum,_ and no, it did not make it better that she’d been a doctor instead of a patient….

…five years ago, his friend who’d long since given up on trying out names and had had his face sewn back together looking like a Halloween clown mask, striding back and forth in the kitchen of Alonzo’s newly leased duplex. He could only go four and a half steps without running into either a wall or the table, and he kept spinning sharply on whatever foot was on the ground when he hit the cutoff and bringing the next one down like there’d been no interruption. Some of the circles were tight enough that the ends of his hair hit him in the face; he didn’t seem to notice that, either.

_Would she even **want** to get married? I mean, her parents were married, and her dad? Total jackwad. _

_Most girls want to get married, J._

_You say that, but it’s not true! This is the end of the century, women can have almost as many commitment issues as men. I just…she’s the best thing that ever…you really think I should ask her?_

_Sure. After all…worst she can do is laugh at you._

_…have you seriously been saving that up for **seven years**?_

_Claro que sí, my friend._

Privately Alonzo thought Harley Quinzel was even crazier than her husband, because he’d started from nothing and made it his own but _she’d_ worked her way into a secure high-paying job and then thrown it all away.

J should have been born fifty years earlier, old Edna Ballard had said once. He could have been a hit on vaudeville. It’d been easier to work your way up in those days—so many more live venues, so many more agencies scouting out talent, so many more levels of success between nobody and star. A little more upward mobility for funny-looking guys.

His stand-up act could _maybe_ have taken him places even nowadays, before the acid, if he’d been lucky and determined. But he’d never had the ambition for that.

Maybe a real career would’ve kept their nameless idiot from getting involved in vigilante stupidity. Maybe then he wouldn’t be here, bleeding onto the pavement for someone who couldn’t possibly have deserved it less.

A gloved hand patted his forearm. J didn’t have the manual dexterity left to control the individual fingers. “Jus’ you wait. Once I get better, m’gonna wage a psych’logical _war_ on Aulden. An’ the rest of ‘em. Shoulda stepped it up sooner. Owlman makes it tough to be a good cop even by cop stannards, gotta put up some…counterpressure. More,” he added, because he’d been doing plenty of that already, had probably made a good bit of difference to the day-to-day abuses. But Aulden was still on the job, which meant he probably hadn’t been doing enough.

He did too much already, though.

More than anyone had a right to expect.

“That’s a good idea, J,” Alonzo said, after too many seconds. No doubt a lot of terrible officers of the law were going to rue the days they’d been born, in about a month. Even if J didn’t make it.

Especially if he didn’t make it.

Jokester sniggered, shaking with it and bleeding harder. Alonzo swore at him, low and fierce and artless, until he realized that was making his friend laugh harder, and cut himself off with a growl. “You are a _terrible influence_ ,” he declared, even though blaming his swearing on a guy who never did it in any language might be considered a stretch. But his hands were covered in an old friend’s blood, and he was in no mood to be reasonable.

And it was all J’s fault however you looked at it.

This had been just a normal Thursday.

He heard a loud footstep in the alley behind him and turned, sharply, as much as he could without moving his hands or knocking J over, and found the Jay Street Jackals gathered there, most of the ones who’d been involved in the confrontation earlier and a few new ones. The biggest two had a stretcher held between them.

“Nicky’s gone to get Doctor Quinzel,” said the one now in front, the short kid who’d been grabbed, who turned out to have a mild Jamaican accent and who Alonzo thought he vaguely knew by sight as a fellow regular at Louise’s diner. J would know his name. J was a slack weight against his chest. J was still breathing.

“He’s real sorry,” said the kid. He seemed sincere. Sort of awkward. _Real sorry_ didn’t exactly cover this. “One of our guys is bringing a truck around, we’ll get him up to the clinic.”

J needed a hospital, Alonzo thought. And the illegal clinic probably had more hospital equipment than the legal one did, at this point, but it wasn’t _actually_ a hospital.

But he couldn’t go to a hospital, so this was all they could do for him. It wasn’t _right._

“Just,” said the kid, and jerked a hand, first at the Jokester, then the stretcher. Alonzo didn’t bother to relax his mouth from its thin, judging line as he nodded, and did his best to _keep up the goddamn pressure_ on both wounds while a quartet of teenagers with obviously no emergency training at all awkwardly slid the limp clown onto their canvas litter. It was an actual, manufactured stretcher, not homemade, and he vaguely wondered where the hell they’d found it.

“Somebody called the clinic already,” he said. How long had it been? Felt like an eternity. “Ten or fifteen minutes, maybe? One of you, get them an update.” Because he was not leaving Harley to reach this alley and find nothing but a bloodstain.

The truck was a closed one, so they got J to the back door of the clinic without being too obvious. For whatever treatment his wife and whoever she’s got helping are qualified to provide.

And now here Alonzo is. His Thursday off is almost over, and he spent half of it sitting in the waiting room of an underground medical clinic, trying and failing to read one of the books they keep around as distraction. Really he should have gone home—several of J’s crazy friends have been in and out—but he can’t shake the feeling that if he left and J died, it would be his fault. Just like it really would have been, if he’d walked away and left him bleeding in the middle of the street.

At nine o’clock Harley comes out and tells him J’s out of danger. That he mostly got shot in the liver so his biggest risk was bleeding out, that Alonzo saved his life. She thanks him. She’s smiling, tired but lit up from inside with relief, and Alonzo summons a smile for her even though his own relief manifests mostly in wanting to just fall asleep right there in the waiting room.

He does not do this. He goes home.

He goes back the next day, after work—his sister is feeding the kids again; if he makes her handle too many dinners alone she starts making him get everyone off to school in the mornings while she sleeps in, but this is why they combined families instead of both trying to parent alone; they get those options. It’s the same volunteer at the check-in desk as yesterday, little old Asian lady in a blue beret who tells him J’s awake and he can go in to check on him.

She seems sympathetic. Yesterday she was there to see him realize he could go wash the blood off his hands now, after the first half hour of waiting.

J has an incredibly tiny private room, small enough that some of the machines Harley has him hooked up to are sort of tucked under the bed to give her space to work. She isn’t here right now, though, as J turns his head and resettles his shoulders against pillows a little, and looks happy to see him. Yeah, he’s feeling better already, he says. Nicky came by to visit earlier and apologize a bunch more, and he got rid of the gun and he’s going to stop cutting school, and J is unreasonably optimistic. As usual.

It’s a lot less horrific than seeing him all mummy-wrapped and whispering-weak was, visiting him all those years ago in the back room of Doc Thompkins’ clinic after Owlman cut him apart.

The distant shocky feeling from yesterday isn’t quite gone, though, even seeing J clearly on the mend, even as they fall into their usual chatter and he’s going to be _fine_. Harley took care of it, he says, like he just ripped his jacket and she sewed it up.

Alonzo’s seen his old friend with his tiny wife. He is even among the privileged few who’ve seen all three of them together, that mad, secret little family. Ella really is a cute kid, if not as amazing as her daddy seems to think. And all three at once or just the pair, Alonzo _knows_ what they’re like, the way their affection lights up whatever room they’re in, like the honeymoon’s never going to end. Like they could live on nothing but love, forever.

But he thinks about grilled cheese sandwiches for a dollar fifty, and he knows they can’t, not really. They need food in their bellies and blood in their veins and children need to be _safe_.

“You can’t live like this,” he says out loud. He didn’t intend to.

J’s eyes are wide and bright and unusually green when he answers, steadily, not pretending confusion at the sudden subject change, “We do, though. We are.”

Alonzo would wonder how J knew he meant the plural ‘you’ when in English there’s no distinction, but there’s no point wondering, with him. He just knows things. Except for the stuff he never seems to even notice. “But for how long,” he says.

“Siempre te preocupes,” J says fondly. He reaches out, and of course he’s not wearing gloves in bed, but he wears them so much Alonzo’s never really gotten used to the way his hands look, now. Since the acid.

(Once in Alonzo’s hearing, J carelessly referred to that night in the factory as _when Owlman had killed him_ —like he’d succeeded, like Jamie’s presence in the land of the living wasn’t survival but resurrection, and then he saw the look on Alonzo’s face. He never made that slip again.)

He lets the white, scarred hand press over the back of his without flinching, though, and it’s maybe a little weirdly smooth but it’s warm and dry and just feels like skin. “Y que no deberías. Estamos bien. Sanos. _Feliz.”_

“Stop that,” Alonzo grumbles. J’s Spanish isn’t _terrible_ , even his accent is alright allowing for how weird he talks all the time, but he doesn’t have a right to switch to it in the middle of a serious conversation, either. It isn’t _his._ Also complaining your friends always worry too much when you just _got yourself shot_ in front of them is complete bullshit. “You owe your daughter better than this,” he says. Pulls his hand away. How’s Ella Quinzel even going to go to school? How’s she going to live, as she grows up, trying to be a secret?

J winces. “I know. We’re working on it.” He shrugged. “I can’t…retire, you know?”

Because of the face. Possibly also because he’d go _really_ crazy trying to fake normal for long, and may in fact be addicted to punching bad guys, but to even have to face those issues, first he’d have to do something about the face. Hard to disappear when no one else in the world looks like you.

There’s been no way out for Jamie since he went out with his new face bare to the world, maybe since he first put on the mask before it and challenged the Owl, and he _doesn’t even really mind._ The asshole is _happy_ , and once upon a time Alonzo liked that about him, how he could be so happy with so little and work so hard to make everybody around him happy too, but that was when they were the same as each other.

Now it’s like they live in different universes, and Alonzo realizes what he really came here to say in the same instant that he says it.

“Jamie,” he says. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“What, visit me on my sickbed? Dude, I’ve _told_ you, don’t take time off work if you can’t afford it, jeez. You’ve got responsibilities, I get that a million percent.”

Alonzo takes a steadying little breath, pushes himself up so he’s not leaning on the bed anymore. “No, I mean _this._ Todo el…no, esa _locura._ The way you live, it used to be okay, I stayed out of it and that estaba suficiente, pero ya no. I do have responsibilities. To family _and_ friends, and—it was your bad, what happened yesterday. You made a bad call. But as your friend, who was right there, I should have been able to _do_ something.” He’d felt a little bit a coward for trying to stay out of things when he’d had faith J knew what he was doing, but the second the gun went off…

“What? First of all you _did,_ you _saved my life_ , but second no, that is not something I ask of my friends, absolutely not.”

Alonzo shook his head. It wasn’t about being _asked._ “Listen. We’re friends, J. I’ll always be your friend. If you really need me, don’t ever feel like you can’t call.”

“Hang on,” Jokester interrupts him, eyes and mouth drawn comically round. “Hang on, is this, are you _breaking up with me?_ ”

It should be funny. J is laughing as he asks it. Or it should be annoying, although if Alonzo hadn’t learned to brush off such slights to his manly dignity he’d never have been this jackass’s friend for fifteen years. But that’s what this is. Alonzo isn’t going to lie; he’s _breaking up_ their friendship. After all this time.

“Por siempre,” he reiterates, for emphasis. “We’re friends. If I can help you without putting my family in danger, I will. But we can’t just…hang out anymore. If this is how it’s going to be. Gangs and bullets and daring the cops to take you instead. I should have said this a long time ago. If I die, if you get me _arrested_ , what are Elena and the kids going to do? She can’t support them all alone. They’ll lose the house. You’re too dangerous, J.”

It’s so much like ending things with Rosa was, and it _feels_ too much the same. Telling her he loved her but until she could stop drinking, he and the kids were going to go live with his sister.

All the effort J goes to, to hide that he even _has_ a little girl, he should be expecting this. He knows he’s a dangerous person to know. He knows where Alonzo’s priorities lie. He knows.

But he _didn’t_ know, and his eyes are wide now not with comedic astonishment but with a wounded look that makes him look like he’s six, and somebody knocked him down and stole his juicebox. He’s _surprised._ Always so surprised.

That’s one of the costs, of looking on the bright side all the time. Even if you plan for the ways you know things can go wrong, if you always think positive then the bad always hits like lightning from a clear sky.

“Oh,” the Jokester says. “I…oh. Okay.” His voice is very small, and when he laughs it’s not forced, it’s never forced, but the pitch is weird in the seconds before he breaks off with _ouch_ and a hand over his injury. He shoots a self-mocking smile at Alonzo. “I hear you,” he says. “I hear you, ‘lonzo. It’s okay.”

Alonzo closes his eyes, and feels that papery hand brush his again, then pull back, too quickly, like J thought better of reaching out. He bites his tongue.

“It’s okay,” J repeats. Like Alonzo’s the one who needs comforting. “It’s okay, ‘lonzo.”

“I’m sorry, Jamie.” His hand tries to make a fist, closing on bedsheets, and he forces it open. Pulls it back to his side.

“No, _I’m_ sorry,” Jamie says. “About yesterday, that was…it was really terrible for you, wasn’t it?” When Alonzo looks, he’s all sympathy and apology for _getting himself shot._ And he should be, the stupid jerk, but at the same time how stupid is that? Alonzo was the one who stood by and let his friend get hurt.

And he thinks a normal person right now would be apologizing for getting shot _and_ promising never to let it happen again, so long as he would just _stay his friend_ , but….

But Jokester respects people’s choices. And he knows what he is. He’s not going to bargain.

“Hey, don’t look like that, it’s okay,” J says, like there wasn’t a break in his own voice. Like it’s perfectly right for him to be trying to comfort _Alonzo_ over feeling bad about hurting _him_.

Confession this Sunday is going to be weird, because Alonzo isn’t even sure what part he feels needs confessing, and is even less sure what Father Mejia is going to think.

“I’m being a coward,” Alonzo says, because you should face that kind of fact head-on. “Letting you down.”

“Gosh no. You’re not. You _saved_ me. I’m the wanted criminal here, you’re not. I have all this risk and violence in my life so other people don’t _have_ to, ‘lonzo! That’s the _point_.”

Alonzo rolls his eyes. “Oh, yeah, you’re a regular Murieta.”

“I kill no people and steal no livestock.”

“That’s a very specific denial.”

“Well. I killed a sheep once. It was very sad. Motorcycle incident. And I steal people all the time, I am the premier un-kidnapper in this municipality!”

Alonzo laughs, and before it’s done it already feels strange in his mouth. This might be the last time Jamie ever makes him laugh. He remembers counting all the _lasts_ with Rosa, as he got ready to end it. He remembers counting them with his mother, never knowing when she’d slip away, every visit for months full of the great knife-edged weight of oncoming loss. He remembers scraping over his memories of his father, after the news of the accident, trying to remember all the precious little moments that had been nothing when they happened, casual and ordinary, until suddenly they became the _last._

J’s responding to the change in his mood already. “’lonzo,” he says. “Hey. Don’t feel bad.”

“For running away in the face of a little blood?”

“Excuse me it was a _lot_ of blood.” The joke falls flat, because it’s too true. “And it’s not _running away,_ ” J presses, and now he’s struggling to sit up, away from the support of his tilt-bed, and Alonzo presses him back without thinking, a hand flat on the front of his shoulder.

This is such an old routine. Standing at Jamie’s bedside while he recuperates. Trying to get him to sit still and give himself time. He always bounces back faster than he has any right to. Why is _this_ Alonzo’s breaking point. Just because he had to see it happen this time, instead of just the aftermath?

Not just that. Because he _saw_ just how carelessly J throws his life on the line, even with a kid at home to come home to. He’s been ludicrously lucky to stay under J’s enemies’ radar this long. It’s been getting crazier by degrees, though even five years ago when he hosted J’s wedding reception _at his actual house_ it was already crazy enough, and meanwhile he’s been building up more and more things to lose and running out of lucky misses, and…and he can’t stop feeling the blood on his hands.

J doesn’t fight the pressure against his shoulder, just slumps back and keeps talking, his voice a little bit wrecked from the strain so for a second it’s exactly like all those years haven’t passed and they’re in the back room of the Park Row clinic instead, where Jamie somehow isn’t dead but isn’t the slightest bit okay, either.

“It’s not. Running away. You’re choosing your ground, that’s all. Your place to defend.”

Alonzo bites his tongue. Jamie keeps talking.

“That’s what this is. What we do. The fight. You _hold on_. You look into the face of the hungering dark and you laugh, or you scream, you do _anything that isn’t giving in_. And Alonzo, you have always been that kind of man—hey. You always have. You don’t give in. And I don’t think you ever will. Walking away and letting me die? That would’ve been giving in. If you turned my family over to the Owl because you were scared, _that’d_ be surrender.

“And sometimes surrender needs to happen. I’m not gonna fault people for surviving. But that’s not you. You’re solid.”

Alonzo hangs his head, just a little, and lets J draw his regrets out of him, because he obviously _wants_ to comfort him about this, and he can give him this one last thing, before he leaves. “I’m abandoning you _now_ ,” he says. “That’s close enough. I’m letting the bad guys win.”

“Nah. Nah, man. You’re not. I’ll be okay, buddy. I’m gonna miss you, but I don’t…I don’t _need_ you anymore. When I needed you, you were there. All these years. What’d I’ve done without you, back in our longshoreman days, huh? But it’s the kids who need you now. Your family. And I’ve built one of my own. So…you don’t have to be sorry.”

“I still am.”

J shrugs, and smiles, and doesn’t try to talk him out of it anymore. Because he respects people’s choices.

Alonzo sighs, because he’s the one cutting them off, and he can’t leave it to J to cut the thread. It stings surprisingly little to be told he’s not needed, considering how much of these fifteen years of friendship has been spent taking care of this idiot one way or another. But that was never what it was _about_.

“So this is it,” he says.

“Yeah. Thanks for saving me one last time.”

“Like I could have _not._ ” J knows that, too, knew not to try to send him away when he was bleeding. Alonzo sighed. “And…I meant it. If you _need_ me.”

“…yeah. I’ll call.” His friend reaches out one more time, and knocks his scarred white knuckles against the back of Alonzo’s forearm before slouching back into his pillows with a sharp breath. “Don’t you lose my number, either. If you need anything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Irl I think the national average of ‘officer-involved’ shootings is about 3 per day overall, but Owlman’s Gotham is likely to have a higher rate and Alonzo can be forgiven some exaggeration under the circumstances.


End file.
